Jingnan Strategy

Chapter 465 The storm continues
"Puff...Puff...Puff..."

"Okay, okay! Tell them it's okay!"

In May, with the sound of surprise, the vast Hetao area also ushered in the footsteps of industry.

Hetao refers to the "Ji" bend of the Yellow River between Shaanxi and Shanxi and its surrounding basins.

During the Han Dynasty, this was a grassland with lush water and grass and a natural and high-quality horse breeding farm.

Unfortunately, as time went by, starting from the mid-Tang Dynasty, the flooding of the Yellow River and the decreasing global temperature caused the precipitation line to continue to move eastward, and this land gradually became a place unfavorable for agriculture.

During the more than three hundred years of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the Song, Liao, Jin, and Xixia wars, this area was left unmaintained, causing the Yellow River to overflow and even the land to become salinized.

It finally ushered in great unification, but it continued to deteriorate because of the Yuan Dynasty's lack of emphasis on agriculture.

In the end, Ming Dynasty won this place, but due to changes in the population structure, it has become a luxury to spend a lot of effort to develop this place.

According to historical trends, this place should have been invaded and occupied by the Mongols a few decades later, and then repeatedly fought with the Ming army until it was completely lost a hundred years later.

However, with the sound of water pumps resounding on this land, developing agriculture on this land is no longer a problem.

Wuyuan (Bazhuoyan'er), Jiuyuan (Baotou), and Dingxiang (Hohhot), these cities with great color in later generations, are now given Chinese surnames again, and have received strong support from the imperial court.

Starting from the fifth year of Yongle, Shanxi has continued to transport people and food here, and these three counties have also continued to transport iron materials to Kaiping.

But even so, the local economic situation is still fragile. Except for a few lands that can be reclaimed to grow wheat, the rest of the land basically grows whatever it grows.

In the past ten years, Lin Su has reclaimed more than 300,000 acres of land to grow wheat, and this is the limit of this land.

Last year, Zhu Gaoxu sent 20 Taixu scholars to this land with selected crops such as potatoes, corn, and peanuts, and began the arduous task of domesticating this land.

Relying on the tenacity of sweet potatoes, corn, potatoes, peanuts, sunflowers and other crops, as well as water conservancy improvements, they established a complete drainage and irrigation system to realize the separation of irrigation and drainage. They gradually domesticated some saline-alkali lands that were difficult to domesticate, but this process was undoubtedly is slow.

Although there are more than 200,000 people in the three counties of Hetao, during last year's slack season, they spent six months improving only 5,000 acres of land.

Although these lands can grow new crops such as sweet potatoes, the yield is not as high as in ordinary farmland.

Because of this, after learning that there was such a thing as a fantasy like a water pump, Lin Su was like grabbing a life-saving straw, and kept shamelessly asking Zhu Gaoxu for a water pump.

Fifty water pumps are now in place, pumping out groundwater and irrigating this moderate to strong saline-alkali land through canals.

Fifty water pumps worked simultaneously from all directions, affecting nearly 10,000 acres of cultivated land.

"At this rate, it is estimated that it will only take a month or two to reduce the salinity of this land to shallow and low, and then crops such as sweet potatoes, wheat, and potatoes can be planted."

Pushing up his glasses, a bachelor explained to Lin Su, who was watching the work of the water pump.

After Lin Su, who was over forty years old, received the exact news, he immediately hugged the Grand Scholar next to him excitedly.

"Okay, okay! If this thing had been available, we would have opened up hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland!"

He shouted excitedly, but the bachelor who was being held by him quickly said:

"It's not too early to be happy. Although the methods of flushing and diverting floods and releasing sediment are useful, they have several troublesome aspects."

"Say it!" Lin Su let go of his hand and said excitedly: "No matter what I do, I don't believe that I can't take over this land!"

"First, the water pump cannot work 12 hours a day. It must take a half-hour break after working for an hour every day to avoid overheating damage."

"Second, we have to arrange for people to turn over the soil every day during the day. This can speed up the leaching of soil salt."

"Third, now that we have pumps, it is convenient to improve saline-alkali land, but at the current improvement rate, whether we can clean up tens of thousands of acres of saline-alkali land every two or three months has become a problem."

The Grand Scholar asked three questions, but Lin Su said without thinking: "Yes!"

He said categorically: "No matter how difficult it is, I believe the people in the three counties of Hetao can do it."

"Mother, you have worked hard for more than ten years and blessed your descendants for hundreds of years. I don't believe that someone would be so lazy that they don't care about the lives of future generations!"

Lin Su felt extremely aggrieved after staying in Hetao all year round, because there were no enemies here. The only enemy was the Wala who invaded a few years ago, and they were also chased by Lin Su for hundreds of miles and never dared to come to Hetao again. .

They didn't dare to come, so Lin Su only had two enemies left.

One is the overflowing Yellow River, and the other is the saline-alkali land caused by insufficient rainfall after being overflowed by the Yellow River.

Yinshan and Daqingshan in the north of the three counties of Hetao have very good green vegetation protection due to the cheap coal mining, the ban on logging, and the policy of building houses with concrete for free.

Over the years, when the saline-alkali land could not be improved, Lin Su followed Zhu Gaoxu's request and dug wells and planted trees, so that the Hetao rarely suffered from northern sandstorms.

However, although the north can be prevented, sandstorms in the south cannot be prevented.

The dust on the Ordos Plateau occasionally blows northward. Although it is not frequent, it also brings a lot of trouble to the local area.

Looking at the Daqing Mountain in the distance and scanning the surrounding people who were cheering happily, Lin Su gritted his teeth:
"More than 200,000 people and brothers in the three counties need to eat. I will sacrifice my face and ask for another thousand sets from His Highness!"

Lin Su did what he thought of, and soon an eight hundred-mile urgent memorial was sent to Beijing. Yishiha, who had received the memorial, was stunned and told the amount Lin Su asked for.

"How many did you say?"

Sitting on the chair in Chunhe Hall, Zhu Gaoxu, who was always as steady as a rock, couldn't help but tremble when he heard the number "one thousand units".

"One thousand units... I really dare to ask for this valuable product."

At this moment, even Yi Shiha, who always had a smile on his face, couldn't help but be speechless, and Zhu Gaoxu was even more speechless:

"This guy doesn't know how expensive firewood, rice, oil and salt are. One thousand units is almost as much as two years' production."

Putting down his ink brush, Zhu Gaoxu rubbed his temples: "Excluding the four months of cold winter from October to early February, there are still eight months left."

"According to the current situation, 40,000 acres of cultivated land can be improved every year. Isn't he satisfied?"

The population of the three counties of Hetao is only more than 276,000. Although the money and food allocated by the court every year is not a small amount, once Hetao can be self-sufficient, it will undoubtedly reduce a lot of pressure on the court, but the problem is that the water pump is more important.

Water pumps are of great help to mining and agriculture in this era, and the Hetao is not the most important one.

Compared with Hetao, coal mines in Shanxi and agriculture in Hami are more important.

After thinking about it, Zhu Gaoxu was still unwilling to dampen Lin Su's enthusiasm, so in the end he had to give in: "Allow fifty units to the three counties of Hetao every year, and tell Lin Su that there are not too many."

"Yes." Yi Shiha chuckled. He also saw that His Highness was very cruel to Lin Su.

Lin Su's abilities were not outstanding, but after all, he was an old man who followed him north. He could tolerate many things.

With this in mind, Zhu Gaoxu continued to immerse himself in handling government affairs, and at the same time, time passed little by little.

By the time August came, Yunnan's land-return movement had reached its climax.

Li Jinglong, Fu Rang, and Muchun respectively launched attacks on the chieftains in Zhenkang, Cheche, Weiyuan and other places.

Many little chieftains reluctantly accepted the idea of ​​returning to their native land, but more chose to resist.

As expected by Zhu Gaoxu, Lu Yu's group of officials stopped after arriving at Kunming Mansion. Only Jiang Huai and a few others were able to go to Yunnan to take up posts.

Zhu Gaoxu didn't pay too much attention to these places. He was more concerned about what Jianghuai would do after arriving in Longchuan.

"Li Ji, the magistrate of Nandian County, came to the official position and took Nandian officials to see Magistrate Jiang and Zhang Fucheng!"

During the Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15th, no one expected that at this juncture, Jiang Huai would lead more than 300 officials to Nandian.

Long before they arrived, Li Ji, the magistrate of Nandian County, had received news that the four counties of Longchuan, Nandian, Ganya, and Manmo, with Longchuan as the main one, would be home to Longchuan Prefecture.

This is the second prefecture in western Yunnan, and it is mainly responsible for the Xuanwei Departments such as Mengyang, Mubang, Luchuan, and Myanmar. Its importance is self-evident.

During the Yongle period, there were six chief officials in the government office. Among them, the prefect had one person, a fourth-rank official, who was in charge of the government orders of the government and the commander-in-chief of each county. He was responsible for promulgating government orders, governing the people, hearing and deciding lawsuits, inspecting treacherous people, and assessing family members. Officials are responsible for collecting taxes and all other government affairs.

Tongzhi, also known as Fucheng, has no fixed staff and is of the fifth rank. He is responsible for local salt, grain, poaching, river defense, sea frontier, river engineering, water conservancy, as well as cleaning up military status, appeasing the people and foreigners, and other affairs.

Tongpan, with no fixed staff and the sixth grade, is in charge of grain transportation, farmland, water conservancy, litigation and other matters under the governor of the state capital. He has the responsibility of supervision over the governor of the state capital.

There is one official, one person, who is in the seventh grade, and he is responsible for promoting the affairs of prison and litigation.

A governor is a person of the ninth rank, who goes out to guard a certain county. He is called the governor of a certain prefecture or a certain state or a certain county.

Zhaomo, one person, from the ninth rank, is in charge of grinding, surveying and auditing.

In addition to these chief officials, there are also six-room secretaries similar to the six departments below.

"Nandian has convenient transportation. We are temporarily managing the administration in Nandian. Please ask Li Zhixian to have some guest rooms in the county government tidied up for government officials to move in."

Standing at the entrance of Nandian Yamen, Jiang Huai, who was wearing regular clothes, sounded neither humble nor arrogant, but his whole person was gentle and elegant.

Facing this Tanhua, Li Ji did not dare to neglect, and quickly asked people to follow his instructions to clean out the vacant rooms in the Yamen and organize them into a temporary Yamen.

After entering his yard, Jiang Huai did not show any politeness, but turned around vigorously to discuss with Zhang Fucheng.

"Brother Huiming, I understand the situation in western Yunnan, but the most urgent task now is to send officials to compile the official records of the four counties into a backup copy of the government records."

"In addition, inform the chief officials of the other three counties to come to Nandian to discuss matters."

After Jiang Huai finished explaining, Zhang Fucheng also nodded and said: "Wen Qing, don't worry, I will let others take care of it now."

After the words fell, Zhang Fucheng walked out of the small courtyard. Jiang Huai also bowed to Li Ji and said:
"Excuse me, Li Zhixian, for your cooperation. I have nothing to do here. Li Zhixian doesn't have to worry."

"Then I will take my leave." Naturally, Li Ji had heard of Jianghuai's name. After all, the news that Jianghuai was selected as the top pick of high school came back early, not to mention that Jianghuai was the top pick from western Yunnan.

Before Jianghuai, Yunnan had at most produced some second-class Jinshi, but there was no such thing as Tanhua. Because of this, before Jiang Huai went south, he had already found out the details of Jiang Huai. Not only was he surprised that he was the son of a serf, he also had to admire the family tradition of the Jiang family.

He admired the fact that an illiterate serf like Jiang Dari could teach a person like Jiang Huai.

Precisely because he understood the Jiang family's situation, he didn't offer any souvenirs to make people laugh.

Now it seems that he did the right thing.

Li Ji left the courtyard with a relieved heart. Seeing him leave, Jiang Huai spoke to the clerk beside him:

"Send someone to the military camp to ask if Uncle Longchuan is in Longchuan. If he is not, then give my handwritten letter to the Qianhu officer in the military camp."

"In addition, you sent people to my hometown to let my parents have a good rest at home, and notified former official Gao Guan to come to the Yamen to report."

"Yes……"

Jiang Huai took out the letter he had prepared early and handed it to the official. The official bowed in agreement after hearing the words, then turned around and walked out of the small courtyard, and sent people to handle the matters Jiang Huai had told him.

The four counties of Longchuan are distributed in three river valleys, and Nandian is located at the fork of two river valleys.

It is only two hundred miles from Manmo to Nandian, more than one hundred and twenty miles from Longchuan to Nandian, and Ganya is only thirty miles away from Nandian.

Therefore, in the face of Jianghuai's summons, the magistrates of the three counties arrived at the Nandian County Government in just four days.

They brought the county's "Yellow Album", "Fish Scale Album" and "Grain Album", and even prepared some local products to cope with the situation.

However, contrary to their expectations, Jiang Huai, who summoned them, did not discuss matters with them immediately. Instead, he left them aside after taking away many documents.

While they were scratching their heads, Jiang Huai and Zhang Fucheng met Gao Guan in the small courtyard, who had arrived after a long journey.

He cleaned himself up a little bit, but no matter how he cleaned up, several years of farming life still made him look a little too mature.

"Zhong Huai, let me introduce to you. This is Zhang Bohai, who ranked first in the second class of the imperial examination. His cousin name is Hui Ming. He is now the Prime Minister of Longchuan Prefecture. You can call him brother."

"Brother Huiming, these are my Zhuma brothers Gao Guan and Gao Zhonghuai. They were framed and convicted earlier, but this does not affect their position as officials."

"I summoned him this time just to let him talk to us about the twists and turns of Longchuan River."

As a middleman, Jianghuai introduced Zhang Bohai and Gao Guan to each other.

Although Zhang Bohai became an official, his background made him not so arrogant. On the contrary, he showed great appreciation for local officials like Gao Guan who had been at the grassroots level.

"Zhong Huai, I have already heard from Wen Qing about your matter. It is not your fault. You should not bear any burden."

"Thank you, Zhang Fucheng, for your understanding..."

Zhang Bohai behaved generously, which slightly opened up Gao Guan's inferiority complex. Then he sat down with the two of them and talked about the twists and turns of Longchuan River.

Although Longchuan Prefecture was under the rule of Wang Xuan, due to frequent chieftain rebellions and Wang Xuan rarely interfering in local government affairs, the local officialdom grew barbarically.

Among them, why the official administration was severely corrupted was mainly related to the hundreds of thousands of family members of Jianwen and ministers from Jiangnan who were exiled at that time.

As the saying goes, a rat excrement ruins a pot of porridge, and the land of Longchuan is a pile of rat excrement mixed with white rice, so it cannot be kept clean.

In the past, those Jianwen and sycophants knew how to bribe and manipulate officials, but now they just use their methods on officials.

Most officials are unable to resist their methods, which is why the local government is so corrupt.

Although the original "Jie Jin Case" involved many people, it failed to clean up the officialdom in Longchuan.

Because of this, Gao Guan knew very well that there were tricks in the records of the four counties, and the tricks were huge.

With the help of Gao Guan, Jiang Huai quickly called all the officials of the government office, and with the help of Gao Guan, several people began to check the accounts.

With the account books of the four counties, there is naturally no evidence of their corruption.

However, with experience, Gao Guan is very aware of the subtleties in the manual.

These things are not enough to clean up the entire Longchuan officialdom, but they are enough to let Jianghuai and the others know the situation in Longchuan.

For three consecutive days, the seven people did not leave the small courtyard. It was not until the fourth day that they roughly figured out the true situation in Longchuan.

"The population is 347,627. This should be no problem. There is no poll tax, so no one will hide the population."

"The bigger problem is the land attributes and crop attributes of the two million acres of cultivated land in Longchuan."

"According to our markings, the cultivated land in Longchuan should be around 2.16 million. Many of the cultivated lands are planted with sugar cane, mulberry trees, soybeans and other crops, but the document says they are planted with rice."

"We need to send people to find out these lands. However, there are only more than a hundred government officials, so it will be difficult to find out."

Uncle Zhang told the situation that he had sorted out over the past four days, and Gao Guan also suggested after hearing this: "I suggest using the promotion of new crops as a breakthrough to make them relax their vigilance."

After Gao Guan finished speaking, Jiang Huai shook his head and said, "We don't need to check."

"No investigation?" Zhang Bohai frowned: "If there is no investigation, how can we rectify the administration of officials? If we do not rectify the administration of officials, how can we implement policies?"

"In my opinion, Wenqing, you still have to step forward to appease this group of people and prevent them from causing trouble."

"It's not that I don't trust you, it's just that I'm afraid that a strong dragon can't defeat a local snake."

Zhang Bohai explained, but Jiang Huai smiled and said: "They are not local snakes, I am."

"As early as the beginning, I had already contacted the military camp, and now the military camp in each county has begun to investigate the situation of farmland."

"In ten days at most, they will ask me to leave the city in the name of Uncle Longchuan. At that time, we will check with them with the document and flag any problems."

"Then I can submit a petition to the governor and make the situation in Longchuan known to the world."

Jiang Huai smiled warmly, but Zhang Bohai was stunned when he heard this: "You and Uncle Longchuan..."

He obviously didn't expect Jiang Huai to have such a relationship, but after thinking about it carefully, it's not surprising.

Not to mention Jiang Huai, there is someone behind Zhang Bohai who is pushing him.

Having the ability is one thing, but whether the ability can be reused is another.

No matter what dynasty or generation, ability plus connections are the best.

"Since you have done a good job, I will be comfortable waiting for you to take the credit this time."

"Brother Huiming, just believe me."

The two looked at each other and smiled without saying a word.

Soon, a few days passed. While the chief officers of the four counties were still confused, military attachés were sent from the military camp to invite Jiang Huai and others to the military camp.

After learning the news, Li Ji and others did not dare to stop him. After all, the weight of the three words "Longchuan Bo" was enough to overwhelm the four county magistrates.

Before they could react, Jiang Huai had already checked the intelligence with the people sent by the military camp.

He wrote the memorial in the military camp, and a team of small flags escorted the memorial and the manuscript to Kunming. He himself took Zhang Bohai and others back to Nandian County, and changed his coldness and eagerly started drinking and talking with the four county magistrates. .

The magistrates of the four counties were confused, but they still established relations with Jianghuai for the sake of black hat.

At this moment, they didn't know that the memorials and manuscripts had been sent to Kunming.

On the tenth day of September, this memorial and document were delivered to the desk of Xu Shuo, the new chief envoy of Yunnan.

"It's really difficult..."

Xu Shuo couldn't help but feel a little headache when he looked at the delivered memorial and the collection of solid evidence.

"I have just arrived in Yunnan, and this kind of troublesome thing has come out."

In the Chief Secretary's office, Xu Shuo communicated with Zhao Gui, who had been promoted to Yunnan Left Councilor. At the same time, he took out a memorial and said:
"This new detective didn't just want to bring down the four magistrates, otherwise he could have brought the memorial and evidence to bring them down."

"What he wants is probably for the Chief Secretary to directly dispatch a sufficient number of officials to replace all the officials in Longchuan Prefecture at the same time."

Xu Shuo saw Jiang Huai's thoughts at a glance. Zhao Gui picked up the memorial and read it, and couldn't help but praise:

"No wonder someone can be a magistrate at this age, but we could only be a county magistrate at that time. With this kind of character and connections, I'm afraid we can't catch up with him."

"Indeed." It is rare for Xu Shuo to admit that his relationship is not as strong as that of Jiang Huai. After all, it is Wang Xuan, the uncle of Longchuan, and although his backstage is the eunuch Bingbi, the eunuch of the ceremony, Wang Xuan only has one Jiang Huai in his hands. Shiha has more than a dozen of him under his command.

Under the choice between the two parties, Yi Shiha will not offend Wang Xuan for his own sake.

"Then what to do with this memorial? Now the Yamen can't mobilize more than 400 officials to help him."

Zhao Gui also had a headache. Now they not only had to be responsible for the food, grass and baggage of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had returned to their native land, but they also had to be responsible for the case brought about by Jianghuai.

The number of officials in the Yunnan Chief Envoy Department was already insufficient, and now that Jianghuai has caused such a disturbance, there may not even be enough.

"First dispatch two hundred officials to help him, and then report this matter to the court."

"If the imperial court finds out about Longchuan, those people will suffer the consequences without us opening our mouths."

Xu Shuo played a trick of borrowing a knife to kill people. You must know that this group of people in western Yunnan were all Jianwen's sycophants.

Now that there are so many cases of concealing the nature of the land among them, neither the one from the East Palace nor the one from Wuying Palace obviously cannot tolerate their mistakes.

Thinking of this, Xu Shuo couldn't help but sigh:
"The position of Chief Minister of Yunnan is really hot..."

(End of this chapter)